Devices for the generation of sound have been in use for thousands of years and come in many styles and forms. More particularly, devices and instruments for the generation of sound that may be pleasing to the ear in what is termed music have been under development and use for many centuries. The guitar is one such musical instrument; and, while much of this disclosure discusses the guitar as an exemplary musical instrument, the invention discussed here is not limited to the guitar and can, in fact, be applied to many musical instruments, including other string instruments, percussion instruments, and wind instruments, for example and not limitation.
The development of the guitar has evolved over hundreds of years. Relatively recent advancements across the past few decades include incorporating electronic pickups into the guitar and connecting the guitar to an amplifier for enhanced and distributed playback of the music while the guitar is being strummed, plucked, struck, or otherwise played. This progress continued in various forms until the 1980's, when there became a desire to connect the instrument to digital computer systems for further enhanced playback and recording. This digital connection has been traditionally made using a common musical digital language known as Musical Instrument Digital Interface, abbreviated as “MIDI.”
MIDI is a music industry protocol standard used to communicate digital data between hardware devices and computers. The past few decades have seen many attempts to add MIDI control to guitars and other musical instruments. In the recent decade, digital music data communication has expanded from the MIDI protocol to similar systems such as Open Sound Control (“OSC”) protocol and proprietary serial data. Providing such protocol to music output from an instrument usually requires building digital control circuitry into the instrument. This is accomplished by either building a dedicated music instrument for digital control or permanently modifying an existing music instrument. These specialized builds commonly compromise the sound, function, and price of the instrument.
Historically, for an existing analog musical instrument to send signals conforming to the MIDI protocol, the instrument has to be permanently modified, either with a traditional MIDI pickup that converts string movement to MIDI signals or with digital controls and circuitry being built into the instrument. Including or adding the digital controls to the instruments often means that the instrument must be permanently modified by cutting or drilling to accommodate the controls and companion circuitry for the controls. These required modifications for a stringed instrument (or percussion or wind, for example) are both costly and leave the instrument as a dedicated digital instrument for digital play and playback, while leaving the instrument less desirable as a traditional analog instrument.